Many organizations, such as businesses or other enterprises, provide their employees or other members with access to a variety of software applications, such as e-mail applications, chat applications, payroll applications, timekeeping applications, and the like. For security reasons, the organizations may impose sign-in as a prerequisite for use of the applications. Thus, a user could potentially have a different set of sign-in credentials (e.g., username and password) for every application to which he or she has access. The necessity of separately signing in to each application (i.e., providing the user's credentials for that application) imposes considerable burden on users, who must enter the credentials for every application used, and on the organization's information technology departments, which must respond to user inquiries about forgotten credentials.
The figures depict embodiments of the present invention for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following description that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the invention described herein.